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oranghutan writes "The Obama administration is looking to the southern hemisphere for tips on how to improve the broadband situation in the US. The key telco adviser to the president, Sarah Crawford, has met with Australian telco analysts recently to find out how the Aussies are rolling out their $40 billion+ national broadband network. It is also rumored that the Obama administration is looking to the Dutch and New Zealand situations for inspiration too. The article quotes an Aussie analyst as saying: 'There needs to be a multiplier effect in the investment you make in telecoms — it should not just be limited to high-speed Internet. That is pretty new and in the US it is nearly communism, that sort of thinking. They are not used to that level of sharing and going away from free-market politics to a situation whereby you are looking at the national interest. In all my 30 years in the industry, this is the first time America is interested in listening to people like myself from outside.'"

Well pulling cable is going to get pretty pricey if you have 20 different outfits doing it.

Are you going to be able to pay $small_ISP $20k to rip up the street and pull you a run of fibre?
But once you do, your neighbour can get it for $1k, so the rest of the street will naturally follow suit, rather than going to a different ISP and also having to put down the initial $20k.

Having a bunch of different ISPs serving different houses on the same block really isnt feasible.

I think, ideally, the last mile would be municipally owned, and they then lease the lines to $small_ISP of your choice, at a flat rate. That's the only way I can see a bunch of ISPs working out.

Why would companies choose to go into areas that are heavily saturated? This would only be feasible if they have some dramatic innovation to offer, which would benefit the people living on that street.

If I choose to pay for the fiber, then I make the deal to get profits from additional customers gained on that line of fiber, if not, good for my neighbor! And I've just voluntarily subsidized my entire street.

Why is it not 'feasible' to have different ISPs on the same block? And why would they operate th

Why would companies choose to go into areas that are heavily saturated? This would only be feasible if they have some dramatic innovation to offer,

This is one of the textbook cases of how natural monopoly/duopoly arise. The cost of entering the market is high - digging up the street, buying pole space, connecting houses, etc. If there's already a market actor present, the expected return on the investment of entering that market is small. From the perspective of an investor, his money is invested bette

>>>This is one of the textbook cases of how natural monopoly/duopoly arise.

Except in the case of cable television, which is most areas the monopoly did not arise naturally. It was *mandated* by the local government when they granted Comcast (or Cox or Time-warner) an exclusive license in the neighborhoods or counties.

The government should revoke that exclusive license, and let other companies to move-in. Imagine if the metal pipe under your street not only had Comcast, but also Cox, Time-Warner Cable, Charter, Apple TV, and so on. You could just pick the one you liked, the same way you can choose a Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota, Kia, or Dodge car.

They simply need to take over the pipe like any utility, and then rent the pipe to broadband providers. That would ease the issues with getting things like fiber layed out, while opening up the market to competition. I think one of the biggest hurdles is getting permits and licensing to actually lay the pipes themselves. Too expensive, time consuming, and too political.

Internet has become just like any other utility. It should be treated that way.

Unless anyone has forgotten, it was the deregulation of cable that caused an explosion in pricing. It's also allowed these markets to become limited to one or possibly two providers if your lucky. Now these exclusive agreements is preventing anyone else from entering the market. If the government takes over the pipes and then just rents those to providers at a fair price, it would remove that hurdle and open up competition.

There is no competition now and painful pricing is the obvious result.

That's a terrible idea. How the hell could you ever drive on the street? And what happens when TWC "accidentally" nicks Verizon's fiber?

Do you simply not live in the real world? There are physical limits here. There can only realistically be one provider ripping up the streets; at the moment that's a private company. It should be the government who then leases it out.

Something similar happens with DSL. Verizon owns the copper to my house (and happily provides crappy DSL service over it) but are legally requ

>>>Are you going to be able to pay $small_ISP $20k to rip up the street and pull you a run of fibre?

I call bullshit. Verizon has been rolling-out FiOS without any need to rip-up streets. They simply run the wire through the same government-owned pipe that Comcast uses. You could have Time-Warner, Cox, Charter, and other internet companies sharing the same metal pipe, each with their own cables running in parallel.

And before you say "that's not efficient" - well neither is having ~20 different

These situations are only created through Government intrusion into the market.

Without "government intrusion" there would be no telecommunications market. Do you think that private companies are going to bury millions of miles of fiber and then just let their competitors use their cables? And how do you think these telecoms are going to get access to dig up all these endless miles of public property? Taxpayers pay = you answer to our elected officials.

Sometimes, something can be so ridiculous, that just pointing and laughing is sufficient.

Nail, meet hammer. To elaborate, there is still NO indication that Australia's fabled broadband network is ever going to eventuate. There's been a couple of years of blow-hard yapping about it, but the government has yet to come up with a single concrete proposition as to how it is going to go about it.

Don't get me wrong, I was one of those who helped this government get elected (and I'm all for the roll-out of a dec

Because running cables is a significant effort and expense. There are two barriers to running cables - economic and geographic.

Economically, it doesn't make sense for any one company to run wires unless they know they have enough customers to pay for it, which means many of the original cable wires probably would not have been run if it weren't for government sponsorship.

Geographically, in order to reach households, you need a continuous connection from your transmission point to the individual homes of ea

There is no 'natural' monopoly or duopoly. These situations are only created through Government intrusion into the market.

Based on actual history, you speak quite a bit of truth. However, it's not *only* created through government intrusion.

When a company is so successful that it can "get it" and "do it" for less... when a company offers something over an infrastructure that is so expensive and offering a product/service on a huge, national scale is the bar that has been set... That company will be so incredibly entrenched that it will never be rooted out by a startup. Ever.

It's the reason 100% free market capitalism can't work on it's own. It needs a little help from the big G, sometimes.

I totally agree the government effed up in the past and basically made AT&T a monopoly. They also continue to eff up in many ways, but without *some* government regulation, you'd STILL be stuck with AT&T anyway. In fact, their actual goal was to be *the* only telecommunications provider back in the early 1900s as they gobbled up the little companies in buyouts. AT&T would have been able to do it too, even without the government's help. I have no reason to believe AT&T or any other company in that position would feel any differently about the Internet.

Multiple competing sewerage providers is a ridiculous idea. How are they going to compete? Commercials that say "Use us, because our sewage is cleaner? Maybe?" People don't care how clean their sewage is, they just want to flush the toilet and get back to work. A scarier scenario would be a commercial like "We'll take your sewage for pennies on the dollar, which is all you care about, and then don't worry what we do with it wink wink." Innovations in this market means finding ways to get rid of sewage while spending as little as possible - NOT providing excellent but somewhat pricey service like the government has an interest in providing.

As for the train stuff, apparently you aren't aware of the ongoing discussion about the issue. It's widely accepted that passenger rail never made a profit in its entire history, and in fact can never make a profit. Throughout all of its golden years of universal use, it probably never paid back the cost of laying rail. The government needed to subsidize these expenses because the infrastructure is important to the common good and a free market wouldn't work here.

Ha! In Australia its the regulation that makes the market competitive. The American's who ran our version of pre-breakup AT&T (Telstra) got very frustrated at not being able to kick their competitors off their network (a former government asset), and left.

You are right that the government is attempting to 'fix' the problems that the government created. The problem in Australia is cronyism, politically and economically. Unfortunately, the government that privatised Telstra, with the rallying cry "Free Trade Market", also sold the company to the (mostly) same people that paid for its inception and subsidies.

I can understand that Telstra had been disassociated from a government department for quite a few years before privatisation. That led to Telstra being mor

It only sucks because the government didn't force companies to upgrade their networks when they took money from the government to.......upgrade their networks.

All the government had to do was actually enforce the measures they enacted and we wouldn't be having this conversation. So yes, while the companies are definitely in the wrong for essentially embezzling the money, the politicians who gave them the money and then let them just pocket it are even more in the wrong.

**Apologies for any typo's - Firefox doesn't want to run on my system without crashing every 5 seconds since I overclocked it (everything else runs 100% fine, and no system crashes - so the problem is with Firefox) and good ol' Shiternet Explorer doesn't have spellcheck.**

>>>the government takes from us while providing almost NOTHING in the way of services

False.

Study-after-study has shown that rural citizens (i.e. the red-colored zones) get MORE money, per capita, than people in the cities/urban areas. This is because the rural citizens have their electricity subsidized and their phone connections subsidized by government or corporations via the Universal Service Fund. And soon their internet will be subsidized too. If rural citizens paid the *true* cost of these long-distance runs of electric/phone they would not be able to afford it.

Oh they would be able to afford it, just after they raised the prices for the goods and services that are PRODUCED in those rural areas.

City dwellers tend to forget, or like to ignore, that they share a symbiotic relationship with the rural hicks. Without the food and energy resources produced "in the sticks" city life would be impossible.

Tough to run a 40 Billion dollar trading company with no electricity. Tough to raise your family in a beautiful suburb when there's no electricity and nothing to eat. Oh you may have a power plant somewhere close to you, but go find out where the fuel for it comes from. You may have some farms somewhere close to your city but go find out what their production is and then divide that into your population.

You'll quickly discover that you'll be starving in the dark without those hicks in the sticks. On the other side of the coin those hicks in the sticks would be doing without life saving medical treatments and equipment, complicated machinery, and sophisticated technology.

Like I said, it's symbiotic but don't think that they couldn't afford it if they had to. They could, they'd just raise the cost of the food you're eating, the power you consume, etc, until they could.

Indeed. I had 100Mbps fiber in northern rural Japan, in 2006. That's fiber from the pole through my wall and into my apartment, by the way, and I never experienced throttling or arbitrary caps. Total cost? Around US$70 per month.

Then I come back to the USA, move into a neighborhood right next to a university in a city of a million people, and the best I can get without some crazy business plan is 1.5M/128K ADSL, for about $40 per month. And the connecti

Because Japan doesn't have the landmass... they have fewer lines to lay and less overhead.

I question if looking to Australia is still a bad idea because they generally have most of their population along the shores, right? Our problem is that we have such a landmass with people spread out. Obama always likes to think of "everybody" when he does something and thinks that my parents who live 50 miles from the nearest major city need ultra fast broadband.

When you are calculating ROI on a project like this you have to remember the longevity of your investment. Communications is very important to almost the entire population, the way it looks it's not like they are going to lay the cables and find out a couple of years later every one went back to paper print. While the initial cost will be greater compared to that of Japan or other more advanced layouts once the layout is complete how will the system preform over a length of time? Will laying fiber involv

What is with it is called profit taking. Some might think of it as organized crime, but it isn't very well organized and in the US it isn't criminal either.

Doing thing the US way in the US is taken as being the best way regardless of evidence to the contrary. In particular doing things the US way means not even looking at outside ways of doing things other than as a way to rule out how not to do something no matter how well it is done elsewhere; if it is done elsewhere a particular way then that way is ru

Mine was $50 in a small city, and right when I left they did introduce bandwidth capping -- they asked us to please refrain from uploading more than 500 gigabytes per month, with no download cap. Japan makes the US internet situation look paltry.

For the record (for those claiming the landmass has anything to do with it), the way Japan regulated was that it encouraged/forced ISPs to work together to cooperatively build and share lines all the way up to the DSL station. From there, each company was responsibl

The.jp or.eu plans might make suitable models for the East coast, but looking to Australia makes pretty good sense for the rest of the USA. Even though the population of the USA is about tenfold that of Australia, Australia presents many of the same hurdles for ubiquitous broadband coverage as does the USA. Both have vast areas to cover across a range of climatic conditions and timezones. Both have an overall low population density, with several concentrations of very high population density in and aro

Actually, "very high population" density in a few coastal cities isn't quite right either. Australian cities and the more modern cities in the USA are sprawled and oriented around suburban life in a way that the older European and Japanese cities (that really do have a very high population density) aren't. .

Sounds about right... the Australian government is notorious for under delivering. Expect this roll-out to complete in a decade, by which time the average consumer will have 10 gigabits wired directly into their brain.

But we have a buffoon who's attempting it, he just made recent blunder [smh.com.au]. Read the PDF, it seems like he's still pushing the whole FTTN + VDSL angle, which when I met him, argued that the premise, whilst an improvement on what we have, is seriously flawed. Telstra will still control the "Last Mile", meaning that they can still gouge us. Now if they are going to go with FTTP, then that changes things a lot, but it isn't going to close to even being started in their current term and I have a feeling they may not make it to a second term. Combine all of that with the fact Senator Conroy changes his story on a daily basis, so I wouldn't be watching us at all!

Telstra will most certainly not control the last mile. Well, at least not Telstra in it's current form. This is why the Government is pushing for a split of Telstra into wholesale and retail.

I won't try to defend our Communications Minister, but there are some very smart technical people involved with this project. It will be a huge success for Australia.

Almost everyone who works in communications in Australia agrees this is a great idea, as I do. Some are skeptical about the dollars, but this infrastructure will be in place for many many decades and will be profitable in the long run. A cheer went up in my IT department when this was announced, literally people standing up at their desks saying how awesome this will be for Aus. You should have seen the celebrations when it was announced that Telstra would be split into wholesale and retail.:)

Oh I whole heartedly agree with the Idea, but that's not to say my cynical side isn't screaming. The current government seem to be more about given the impression they are doing the right thing for the country, but I don't see a whole lot happening. The minute I see a detailed plan without Conroy spout a bunch of buzzwords he doesn't understand, I will remain somewhat skeptical.

Gah. The NBN. 43 Billion is about $5000 per home. It's just too expensive.

Why didn't they stick with the original idea? Fiber connecting the cities, then rent out bandwidth to local providers, who could do the last few miles using whatever technology the customers wanted. Some people want wireless (and yes, there are issues). Some people want fiber. Some people just want a cheap connection, because they only use the internet for email and banking. It would have been a little more expensive for the people wh

Because it isn't just about the home and personal use. It's about businesses and utilities such as hospitals, schools, fire, police, etc.

Business contributes a significant chunk of our tax take - corporate tax take increase is what is responsible for all our tax cuts over the last 10 years, after all - and more efficient utilities reduces spending.

The difference is that business doesn't vote, people do - so while the backbone will be there for business, the fringe cases of getting it to the homes will get the votes.

And before you object to public money being spent on private enterprise, that's because it's infrastructure. The government builds roads and rail and ports because very few single businesses can afford to pay for it themselves (BHP & Rio being exceptions). This is what governments are supposed to do, a fact too many have forgotten.

Is Obama going mad?
Here in NZ we have one of the WORST internet "solutions" in the world!
Its:
-Slow
-VERY expensive
-Lots of area's don't even have access to internet
-Heavily Data Capped (I pay $120 NZ for 10mbit (which is more like 7mbit) with only 40GB of data!)

IMHO, New Zealand is pretty good with broadband coverage. NZ currently have ADSL coverage to over 70% of the population and UMTS (3G broadband) coverage to 97% of the population with two different carriers providing that service. We might not have the best speeds et al but a much higher proportion of the population can actually get broadband compared to the US.

The US current approach is odd -- they're rolling out fibre to the home in some areas, despite the fact a large proportion of the US population is st

Well they can't do worse than Qwest. They took 6 months of talking about permits and digging up roads to fix my internet for the 8th technician to conclude that a cable was unplugged. Meanwhile I was with the local cable company who couldn't deliver a ping to their own switches 400ms.

So now I'm still with Qwest I ditched the cable company and I get 200ms pings to their local switches and my bandwidth wavers between.5mb and 2mb (I pay for '6').

Private market — despite occasional flaws — is the best there can be. And when there is a problem, it is usually traced to the government's filthy little fingers. In this case, it is the "genius" decision to grant telecoms a mono- or, at best, duopoly over a market...

Obama believes that the federal gov (not free market supply/demand) has all the answers. He believes that people like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and all of his Tsars are the all-knowing solution providers that know what's best for the rest of us. Yes, even smarter than everyone here on Slashdot.

It is not only that, but also the belief (sincere or not) that equality ought to trump quality... Government-provided schools, clinics, roads, subways, postal service, inevitably suck, but they suck equally for all

Denmark has the second most equal distribution of income[1]. It's also the country where people are the most happy about their lives[2].

What does this prove? Well, I'm probably guilty of cherry-picking evidence, and correlation isn't necessarily causation, but I think it suggests that equality doesn't ruin our lives (yes, I'm probably also biased, being a Dane).

That certainly matches my personal experience. Free medical care, free education, well-stocked public libraries, a postal service I was happy to use (and still am, I just use it much less), the state even gives you money while you're studying and you can life off of it if you're a bit frugal. Sure, you get to pay a lot of taxes, but I'm happy to do that, seeing how I'm getting my money's worth for it.

If Obama is asking Telstra / Australia or the Australian government ANYTHING about broadband than my American friends, I am very very very sorry for you, quite sincerely - this can not end well at all.Telstra is one of the most vile companies in existence, Microsoft may get mocked a lot here but that's only because the evils of Telstra are not known internationally. (We're talking about a company that first introduced Bigpond cable with a 100mbyte per MONTH limit, no - I'm not joking)

As for the broadband network, it's a load of cobblers, we won't see it for a decade at least, it's one of those dopey empty promises which mean absoloutely nothing (no, I'm not a liberal, not even close)

To anyone who doesn't know, the two major political parties in Australia are the Labor party (left-center) and the ironically named Liberal party (right conservative). The term "liberal" in Australia is therefore rather ambigious a lot of the time.

The new broadband network is being proposed by our current Labor government.

two major political parties in Australia are the Labor party (left-center) and the ironically named Liberal party (right conservative).

I'd say that labor would be center-right and Liberals would be center-right-right.

Considering that current PM got in by saying 'we will do exactly the same thing as the liberals, but with more kittens!' means we had a choice between a party with conservative economic policy, tough (but fair) border protection, tuff on crime tuff on the cause of slogans - OR - a party with conservative economic policy, tough (but fair) border protection, tuff on crime tuff on the cause of slogans, but we are heaps differe

You're kidding yourself, absoloutely and utterly kidding yourself, your faith in government is incredible.I'm only 31 and I've worked in the state govt for 4 years now, I know how things work - most people should, do you not read the paper or follow the news?3 to 5 years, maybe - if you're in a specific targeted 'beta' area (probably new housing estates)

Goodness, the $40B broadband plan will be a disaster.Lets see.About 10 Million possible connection points (Business + Households) with say 25% takeup (after they will still be competing with ADSL/Cable which is already > 10 Mbits/sec to most)Thats $16k per connection. Lets assume cost of capital (6%) + maintainence(4%) is 10%/annum.So it will cost $1600/annum or $133/month before we add any data costs.

So USA, don't follow our example.Our dear leader K.Rudd is intent on sending us as broke as you.

Now consider what the bandwidth of the NBN will be used for. TV, Telephone, Internet, Video Calls, remote diagnosis by doctors, huge benifits for schools, library's, research institutions, small/medium/large businesses and more.

The NBN will form the backbone of Australian communications for many many decades to come. The return on investment will take many years, but this is a long term project that will eventually be extremely profitable as well as hugely benificial to all Australians.

We don't need an NBN to deliver telephone (at a whopping ~30kbit/s), or internet or video calls, "remote diagnosis by doctors" is a bit of a creepy thought even if it really did need far more bandwidth. And the little TV I watch I get via satellite or radio, why waste money delivering broadcast content packet by packet to each individual?

Huge benefits for schools/libraries/research institutions like what? Do people go to libraries to use the net? Would they after they've had super-expensive broadband sho

All of that nonsense relies on the absurd assumption that the NBN will be some side by side competitor with the existing ADSL network.FTTN refers to running fibre lines to the very nodes where the ADSL network currently has copper, do you really believe we're going to keep maintaining the copper wires sitting next to the fibre?

So it will cost $1600/annum or $133/month before we add any data costs.

That obviously isn't true because at that price no one (who had an option) would take it up. Whatever it costs to build access to it will have to be priced according to what the market will bear. Obviously that means someone (presumably the taxpayer) taking a hosing but that's where infrastructure usually comes from.

Australia is probably a worst case scenario for internet access. We have a low population density, our population centres are vast distances apart, our absolute population is pretty low and we don't have a lot of neighbour countries

With that in mind I don't think our access is all that bad. I can get 100gigs of ADSL2+ for $50 a month which isn't too bad.

Wait, are you assuming it'll need to pay itself off in a year? That's not how long term projects work. I'd suggest it's probably going to be targeted for 20 - 30 year return period, so you'd be looking at a far different cost base.

The reason the government is doing it is because they're the only ones that can take a 20 - 30 year timescale. It's called building infrastructure, and it's what governments are supposed to do with our taxes.

Whirlpool's latest survey showed that half the connections are running at less than 10Mbit/sec.

Yeah, but that's today. The national broadband system won't be rolled out for at least a decade, by which time that will have improved. A lot. Telstra is about to start rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 for their cable broadband, which starts at around 40 Mbps, and can go much higher.

We're in the process of making the mistakes right now. Our new broadband plan is like a beautiful locomotive gliding through the air in super-slow motion, but if you have some foresight you can see you're watching a train wreck in slow motion

This is from the same guy who threw millions at stopping internet bullying with a mandatory nationwide blacklist of disgusting sites, then leaked the list of disgusting sites. Just the other day he released confidential figures revealing the confidential value of our

Foolish man Obama looking to Oz and NZ when South Africa has it all wrapped up. No infrastructure, no data lines, hubs, switches or routers to support. They just use data pigeons! Not only are they cheap, they're as fast as broadband and they appease the tree huggers!

As a town in Minnesota [arstechnica.com] discovered, all you have to do is threaten to roll your own. Suddenly 50Mb/s for $50/month is available.

The problem isn't technology, population density or land area. The problem is that local government provide a monopoly (or oligopoly), so there is no incentive to truly cut margins and invest in infrastructure. Stop that, and companies will find a way to keep getting that check in the mail.

Are you sure, I mean really sure that you want free and unbridled competition in the sickcare industry? Right now those businesses are so heavily regulated that it makes sense to give them an anti-trust exemption. And, in many ways, that makes sense because we, as a society, have decided that we're not going to trust the free market entirely when it comes to sickcare.

That, however, has created a problem. There is very little incentive to contain costs when the insurers can just simply pass on rate inc

The problem with Internet access in the USA is the local mono/duopolies. There is no reason whatsoever why Internet access should not be the fastest and cheapest found anywhere in the world in the dense population centers. Although many people will say: "but what about the rural areas" -- the reality is that most people live in densely populated areas.

So, what to do about the local mono/dupolies? The obvious place to start is to allow cities to build their own last-mile connections to houses and rent these

There has been several cases where Broadband quality has been drastically improved when the local governments get fed up with the slow speeds and move to install new networks of their own. The Telcoms either jump to provide better service or the residents get better service from a local government run Telcom. It's a win-win situation: nothing like a little competition (especially in a near monopoly) to shake up the status quo and get the results we want.

What am I saying, this is slashdot, bash away before thinking about it...

But honestly, Nowhere does it say "Obama has hired Austrailian Telco Analysts", or "Obama is modelling the effort after the Austrailian effort". Looking for inspiration means asking around and picking up ideas. Just like a software engineer who goes to Google to look for inspiration. The bad ones just copy and paste, but the average and above just look at the other results and try to mold a better solution. I would say this is allegorical. We'll see what happens.

We need to be taking our examples from better sources, so this calls for drastic measures before it is too late. We must declare war on Japan, then immediately surrender to them. They will have no choice but to occupy us to ensure a safe recovery from the war, especially with reconstruction. When the Japanese realize our horrible internet situation, they will declare a humanitarian emergency. This should secure us UN funding to upgrade our networks while ATT and Comcast have sanctions imposed against them.

Long long ago, Australia worked out that nobody would wire them up.
So they rolled out their own. Not too private, not to public.
Just pay for the wire, make a profit to pay back cost and future needs.Jobs for life, cheap local calls, $ for anything else, early with pure digital networking.
A big Bell, but you could make calls, send faxes, enjoy dial up and pay huge amounts for data services.
Then Australia sort of got a bit lost/crazy with its cash flow in the 1980's/90's.We where going to be pulled into the 20C and had to sell it all, sort of.
So on top of this sold off, own it all Bell giant, all other isp's had to make a profit.
They also controlled the pipe/s out of Australia and ran an ISP.
So for a decade Australia was in telco hell, for profit and gov backed, brainwashed into thinking every packet was golden as we where so far away and unique due to population density.
Australia now has another pipe to the outside world, but still has the old cartel pricing, why change a good thing;)
Our federal gov has basically said they will roll out optical and out flank the existing Bell copper, exchanges, lawyers ect.
What is a greedy cash crazed Bell to do? Lobby, bribe, PR smear, grass roots astro turf?
Well that does not work as they are pure evil.
What can the US learn?
Roll your own optical and set a few 10's of telcos free on top.
Let the ISP's pay a basic access fee to keep the network working and then sell any mix of services they like.From all you can eat, no tech support, to pick up on 3rd ring to a real person for $$$.
Connect your schools, hospitals, tv, radio, universities and enter the 21C with something useful. Understand what John D. Rockefeller was taking about when he said 'Competition is a sin." and nail your demands to a town hall doors.
Roll your own and take back your local community from the optical barons and then get your local data to an area where you can play the telcos off against each other.

The problem with Net Neutrality is the last mile. Thus instead of adding more regulation in the form of Net Neutrality, the government needs to address the issue of government granted monopolies on the last mile. Once that is addressed, Net Neutrality issues will fade away. But Net Neutrality can be used as a stick to get more competition in the last mile.

What needs to happen is the Federal government needs to tally up how much tax payer money has gone to the telecoms, add interest, and then tell the telecoms that they need to pay back X billion dollars, once they have done that, they will own outright their own network. The money paid back to the government goes into a fund available to other ISP's that want to lay their own fiber.

Local municipalities would build, if they haven't already, a pipe in the right of ways in front of every house, going to every house. This pipe is what competing ISP’s would use to lay cable in, instead of having to dig separate trenches themselves. The local government would charge a minimal maintenance fee to any ISP who wants to lay cable in the pipe. The telecoms would also pay the same fee, even if they are not using the pipe, which would be for access to the right of way in front of, and through people’s property. This way the construction and maintenance of the pipe is guaranteed without any higher taxes.

force the telco's to either invest the billions they were given or return the money.

If it was me, i'd roll out government owned last mile fiber or high quality copper in population densities greater then 100 people per square mile, and allow private enterprise to use this for a nominal fee and have them provide the backhaul and support services. in area's with lower population density auction off spectrum to ATLEAST 4 different providers in any area.

this way poviders aren't trapped into making huge investments they won't see a return on, and customers aren't trapped by monpoly providers. everyone wins without tax payers having to foot 100% of the bill or making the bill larger then it needs to be.

This attitude of "The US shouldn't look at other countries as examples. If we didn't come up with the idea ourselves, it doesn't deserve to be used in America!" is really weird to me, as an outside observer. The same attitude is present in the current healthcare reform debate and in metrication. Surely Americans are aware that foreigners do come up with good ideas, and that you haven't failed as a country because you used some?